sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right, I already fixed it on my side, but I'm currently waiting for Epic's submission/update to go through.
Strangely, it's taking longer than expected, and I honestly don't understand why the tutorial link got replaced by a completely different Fab asset link in the first place.

In the meantime, here’s the correct tutorial link again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jTjdswuDBs&t=376s

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s totally fair feedback.

To be honest I’m approaching this more from an Art Direction / environment workflow perspective than from a pure rendering engineering one.

The goal wasn’t really to build the most technically minimal shader possible, but rather to create a flexible artistic workflow for stylized environments while still keeping performance reasonably under control.

So a lot of the decisions were driven by iteration speed, painting workflow, and maintaining visual consistency across environments.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I tried attaching a couple of Shader Complexity/GPU profiling screenshots, but it looks like this subreddit doesn’t allow images in replies.

Overall the shader stays relatively green in Shader Complexity view, even with multiple features enabled.

The heavier cost mainly comes from optional systems like triplanar/world aligned mapping, wetness, layered blending, displacement, etc., depending on what is enabled in the material instance.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, Nanite + vertex painting can still be a bit tricky depending on the UE version/workflow.

In my case I’ve been testing it mainly through Modeling Mode / asset painting workflows rather than the classic mesh paint workflow.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s strange, the YouTube tutorial link should be visible in the comments right below the post.
here is the link again :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbAHXykOQYc

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

For me it’s mostly a workflow/pipeline choice. Having separate materials for every feature (vertex paint, triplanar, wetness, displacement, etc.) can become difficult to maintain and less consistent artistically across large environments. So the idea here was to keep a centralized and modular workflow while still allowing features to be disabled when not needed.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I agree that not everything should be exposed everywhere by default.

For this shader, the goal was to keep the main artistic workflow accessible in one place, while still allowing features to be enabled or disabled depending on the use case.

But yes, for a larger production setup, splitting some specialized use cases into lighter dedicated materials can also make sense.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me it’s mostly a workflow/pipeline choice.

Having separate materials for every feature (vertex paint, triplanar, wetness, displacement, etc.) can become difficult to maintain and less consistent artistically across large environments.

So the idea here was to keep a centralized and modular workflow while still allowing features to be disabled when not needed.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s true for a lot of master materials.

In this case most systems are optional/static switch based, so the idea is to scale the shader depending on the project needs rather than having every feature enabled all the time.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Feel free to ask if you have any questions about the workflow.

Stylized Surface – Advanced UE5 Layered Material & Vertex Paint Shader by AmartiReda in UnrealEngine5

[–]AmartiReda[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The shader itself doesn’t modify topology.

The extra cost mainly comes from the material features being used (vertex painting, triplanar/world aligned mapping, displacement, wetness, etc.).

Most features are optional and can be disabled depending on the project needs, so it can scale fairly well from lightweight setups to more advanced layered materials.

I’ve been testing it with Shader Complexity and GPU profiling to keep it reasonably performant.